11 ms·

There's an interesting graphic that shows how often the Justices vote the same or different, see [1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/06/24/upshot

by todd8 5y ago

There's an interesting graphic that shows how often the Justices vote the same or different, see [1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/06/24/upshot/24up-scotus-agreement-rates.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/06/24/upshot/24up-s...

peeters 5y ago
It's pretty interesting that the most "polarized" judges still only disagreed 34% of the time.
- dvt 5y ago
  Interpreting law is, generally speaking, a pretty objective task and SCOTUS isn't as politically partisan as the media often portrays it. Justices are consummate professionals, friends, and co-workers, not partisan hacks. Ginsburg and Scalia were famously extremely good friends.
  - lupire 5y ago
    Unfortunately that changed in 2016-2020 with the McConnell doctrine. The latest appointment's only distinguishing qualifications were partisanship and youth.
    - jiscariot 5y ago
      > The latest appointment's only distinguishing qualifications were partisanship and youth. Can you expand more on this? From my understanding, Gorsuch and Barrett have a solid pedigree, while there are questions around Kavanaugh's.
      - CuriouslyC 5y ago
        Barrett is an ideological sock puppet who's more interested in forcing others to conform to her morality than objectively interpreting the law.
        rayiner 5y ago
        She’s an “ideological sock puppet” because she might vote to Roe, which would simply make American constitutional law the same as … France or Italy (which, contemporaneously with Casey determined that abortion was an issue for the legislature). Madness!
        CuriouslyC 5y ago
        If you read her questions in that case her bias and attempt to set up justification for her own preconceived opinion were clear.
        rayiner 5y ago
        It’s not a “bias” to believe the Constitution doesn’t contain a right to privacy that protects abortion. That’s just being able to read. Pretty much nobody seriously believes in the logic underlying Roe. It’s the Lochner of left-wing jurisprudence. Even Ginsberg criticized the case, and offered a different justification for abortion rights. At this point it’s just stare decisis and ideology sustaining the precedent. Accusations of “bias” and “preconceived opinion” are absolutely hilarious coming from the left. Republican judges regularly get wobbly and vote for the liberal position (Obergefell, Bostock, Woman’s Health. The liberal judges, however, always vote party line in these cases.)
        saalweachter 5y ago
        The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
      - rayiner 5y ago
        Kavanaugh has sterling credentials. He was in Law Review at Yale. He was both a SCOTUS Clerk and Bristow Fellow. He argued a case in the Supreme Court. He was a partner at a top law firm. These are the brass rings in the legal profession everyone is trying to grab. He was a prominent judge in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals for 12 years, during which time he developed a reputation as a “feeder” judge who regularly placed his clerks onto the Supreme Court. That is the same role that Justice Ginsberg and Judge Garland had before they were appointed to the Court.
        tptacek 5y ago
        Kavanaugh's credentials are strong enough that his absence from Trump's 2016 shortlist of potential nominees was noted in the Washington Post.
    - dvt 5y ago
      We've heard the same thing about Obama's appointments, Bush, and Clinton before him. The sky is always falling, but in reality the courts have been surprisingly stable and politically neutral -- a testament to the United States' governing principle of judicial independence.
      - CuriouslyC 5y ago
        We had a more balanced court in the past. Thomas and Scalia were previously on the court's fringe, but now with Amy Coney Barrett the fringe is pushed to crazytown. Pair that with the conservative majority, and you have a recipe for partisan hackery.
        rayiner 5y ago
        I think people have a poor understanding of just how far to the right the median American is on the issues the Supreme Court regularly handles. Remember, the majority of American support school prayer, think abortion should be illegal after the first trimester, and think that race shouldn't be a factor in college admissions or employment. Even in the latest Gallup polls, only 37% of Americans think the current Supreme Court is "too conservative": https://news.gallup.com/poll/4732/supreme-court.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/4732/supreme-court.aspx
        tptacek 5y ago
        (1) That's a pretty selective survey. Do you deny that I could generate a list of issues the Supreme Court has heard, all on the left side of the American political spectrum, that the majority supports? (2) Public opinion polls on issues, as opposed to candidates, are essentially meaningless.
        rayiner 5y ago
        Yes, sure, though primarily economic issues—Obamacare, campaign finance, etc. Opinion polls on issues are important, because two-party politics distorts the signal of what the public really wants. That’s an especially bad problem in America, because race/immigration status splits both the social conservatives (many minorities are socially conservative but caucus with white liberals) and the economic liberals (many white people are economically liberal but caucus with white conservatives). Abortion is a good example: in both parties the abortion debate is dominated by extremists. If you look at parties, it seems like the country is divided between two extreme positions. But in reality there are lots of pro choice republicans and pro life democrats. And there is actually a broad consensus that abortion should be permissible, but only in the first trimester. Another good example is affirmative action. The Democratic Party establishment loves it, but many democrat voters don’t. Thus, something like Prop 16 fails in California resoundingly even with the nearly universal support of Democratic politicians in an overwhelmingly democratic state. Of course the exact same things can be said for republicans. The Republican establishment is in love with repealing universal healthcare, while many Republican voters like it. When we think about the legitimacy of the Supreme Court vis-a-vis the will of the people, it’s important to keep public opinion polling in mind. In the next term, the Supreme Court may will outlaw race-based affirmative action in college admissions, and uphold a 15 week abortion ban. The media will treat both as far right extremism, but both decisions will in fact reflect the popular will.
    - dontcare007 5y ago
      And the current candidate was strictly chosen from a pool based upon race and chromosomes .
    - rayiner 5y ago
      I don’t know how this idea possibly gained traction. If you asked me to come up with a short list in 2010 of who the next Supreme Court appointments of a Republican President would be, all three would have been in the list. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh were well known “feeder” judges in the Courts of Appeals, like Judge Garland is and Justice Ginsburg and Justice Souter were before their appointment. Barrett was a prominent law professor. The appointments were completely unsurprising.
      - dvt 5y ago
        It's just a talking point that gets repeated by folks that don't follow the legal profession in general or the federal courts more specifically. It's completely ridiculous to claim that Barrett is a "conservative sockpuppet" as some commenter below us makes. She's been a law professor most of her life. But everyone plays dirty: Garland should've been on SCOTUS (his work on the OKC bombing prosecution speaks for itself, and is not to mention patriotic); it's a shame that Congress blocked that vote, but politics is politics.
    - Dracophoenix 5y ago
      Changed? I guess you've never heard of Robert Bork or Ted Kennedy's admitted attempt to sabotage him on the Senate floor.
  - rectang 5y ago
    Asserting that SCOTUS decisions are apolitical and "objective" is inherently political.
    - SllX 5y ago
      Sure, but it’s a policy choice—a more polite way of saying a political choice—to treat SCOTUS like a legal institution rather than a political one. It is a legal institution, not a political one in the way Congress is explicitly a political institution that writes laws, but the seat holders are not apolitical machines who merely objectively look at what the law says because part of why they are there is that they have perspectives and they exercise this valuable thing called professional judgement that in the private sector people pay a lot of money for. Judicial philosophies which defer to the text as it is written (textualism) or interpret the text as it would have been understood in its original time and place (originalism) are treated with suspicion and politicized by those who believe the text should be interpreted through a modern reading and understanding of the text (living constitutionalism). SCOTUS will never be perfectly apolitical, not while it is staffed by people as I expect it to in perpetuity, but it should not also succumb to becoming a political institution instead of a legal one.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > Asserting that SCOTUS decisions are apolitical and "objective" is inherently political. Maybe, it's definitely false, in any case.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Interpreting law is, generally speaking, a pretty objective task No, it's not. It is highly subjective; the various canons of legal construction all require subjective judgements, and selecting and prioritizing between them is subjective, and that's not even getting to the degree to which in practice those canons are invoked as post hoc rationalizations for decisions reflecting a jurists ideological and personal biases on the matter at issue.
    - dvt 5y ago
      Your argument is wrong, but more saliently, is simply not in line with the data of thousands and thousands of cases. Judges on the "opposite" sides of the political spectrum disagree just ~30% of the time. This shows that law is interpreted -- by smart, well-educated, professional justices -- very similarly across the board.
      - panda-giddiness 5y ago
        Sure, most cases aren't polarizing, but that doesn't mean that the law is objective -- the other 30% of cases proves as much. Personally, I'd be more interesting in knowing how many cases split 5/4 (or 6/3) the obvious way versus how many cases were unanimous or nearly so.
        dvt 5y ago
        9-0 is far more common than 5-4, this is pretty common knowledge for anyone that follows SCOTUS, but here's a source[1]. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/06/28/those-5-4-decisions-on-the-supreme-court-9-0-is-far-more-common/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/0...
        panda-giddiness 5y ago
        Sorry, I see now that my comment was unclear. I mean of the 5/4 splits, I'd be curious what proportion of cases split 5/4 in the expected manner (Democratic vs Republican appointees) versus other alignments (e.g., Sotomayor, Thomas, Gorsuch, and Ginsburg versus the rest).

by todd8 5y ago

peeters 5y ago

It's pretty interesting that the most "polarized" judges still only disagreed 34% of the time.

dvt 5y ago
Interpreting law is, generally speaking, a pretty objective task and SCOTUS isn't as politically partisan as the media often portrays it. Justices are consummate professionals, friends, and co-workers, not partisan hacks. Ginsburg and Scalia were famously extremely good friends.
- lupire 5y ago
  Unfortunately that changed in 2016-2020 with the McConnell doctrine. The latest appointment's only distinguishing qualifications were partisanship and youth.
  - jiscariot 5y ago
    > The latest appointment's only distinguishing qualifications were partisanship and youth. Can you expand more on this? From my understanding, Gorsuch and Barrett have a solid pedigree, while there are questions around Kavanaugh's.
    - CuriouslyC 5y ago
      Barrett is an ideological sock puppet who's more interested in forcing others to conform to her morality than objectively interpreting the law.
      - rayiner 5y ago
        She’s an “ideological sock puppet” because she might vote to Roe, which would simply make American constitutional law the same as … France or Italy (which, contemporaneously with Casey determined that abortion was an issue for the legislature). Madness!
        CuriouslyC 5y ago
        If you read her questions in that case her bias and attempt to set up justification for her own preconceived opinion were clear.
        rayiner 5y ago
        It’s not a “bias” to believe the Constitution doesn’t contain a right to privacy that protects abortion. That’s just being able to read. Pretty much nobody seriously believes in the logic underlying Roe. It’s the Lochner of left-wing jurisprudence. Even Ginsberg criticized the case, and offered a different justification for abortion rights. At this point it’s just stare decisis and ideology sustaining the precedent. Accusations of “bias” and “preconceived opinion” are absolutely hilarious coming from the left. Republican judges regularly get wobbly and vote for the liberal position (Obergefell, Bostock, Woman’s Health. The liberal judges, however, always vote party line in these cases.)
        saalweachter 5y ago
        The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
    - rayiner 5y ago
      Kavanaugh has sterling credentials. He was in Law Review at Yale. He was both a SCOTUS Clerk and Bristow Fellow. He argued a case in the Supreme Court. He was a partner at a top law firm. These are the brass rings in the legal profession everyone is trying to grab. He was a prominent judge in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals for 12 years, during which time he developed a reputation as a “feeder” judge who regularly placed his clerks onto the Supreme Court. That is the same role that Justice Ginsberg and Judge Garland had before they were appointed to the Court.
      - tptacek 5y ago
        Kavanaugh's credentials are strong enough that his absence from Trump's 2016 shortlist of potential nominees was noted in the Washington Post.
  - dvt 5y ago
    We've heard the same thing about Obama's appointments, Bush, and Clinton before him. The sky is always falling, but in reality the courts have been surprisingly stable and politically neutral -- a testament to the United States' governing principle of judicial independence.
    - CuriouslyC 5y ago
      We had a more balanced court in the past. Thomas and Scalia were previously on the court's fringe, but now with Amy Coney Barrett the fringe is pushed to crazytown. Pair that with the conservative majority, and you have a recipe for partisan hackery.
      - rayiner 5y ago
        I think people have a poor understanding of just how far to the right the median American is on the issues the Supreme Court regularly handles. Remember, the majority of American support school prayer, think abortion should be illegal after the first trimester, and think that race shouldn't be a factor in college admissions or employment. Even in the latest Gallup polls, only 37% of Americans think the current Supreme Court is "too conservative": https://news.gallup.com/poll/4732/supreme-court.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/4732/supreme-court.aspx
        tptacek 5y ago
        (1) That's a pretty selective survey. Do you deny that I could generate a list of issues the Supreme Court has heard, all on the left side of the American political spectrum, that the majority supports? (2) Public opinion polls on issues, as opposed to candidates, are essentially meaningless.
        rayiner 5y ago
        Yes, sure, though primarily economic issues—Obamacare, campaign finance, etc. Opinion polls on issues are important, because two-party politics distorts the signal of what the public really wants. That’s an especially bad problem in America, because race/immigration status splits both the social conservatives (many minorities are socially conservative but caucus with white liberals) and the economic liberals (many white people are economically liberal but caucus with white conservatives). Abortion is a good example: in both parties the abortion debate is dominated by extremists. If you look at parties, it seems like the country is divided between two extreme positions. But in reality there are lots of pro choice republicans and pro life democrats. And there is actually a broad consensus that abortion should be permissible, but only in the first trimester. Another good example is affirmative action. The Democratic Party establishment loves it, but many democrat voters don’t. Thus, something like Prop 16 fails in California resoundingly even with the nearly universal support of Democratic politicians in an overwhelmingly democratic state. Of course the exact same things can be said for republicans. The Republican establishment is in love with repealing universal healthcare, while many Republican voters like it. When we think about the legitimacy of the Supreme Court vis-a-vis the will of the people, it’s important to keep public opinion polling in mind. In the next term, the Supreme Court may will outlaw race-based affirmative action in college admissions, and uphold a 15 week abortion ban. The media will treat both as far right extremism, but both decisions will in fact reflect the popular will.
  - dontcare007 5y ago
    And the current candidate was strictly chosen from a pool based upon race and chromosomes .
  - rayiner 5y ago
    I don’t know how this idea possibly gained traction. If you asked me to come up with a short list in 2010 of who the next Supreme Court appointments of a Republican President would be, all three would have been in the list. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh were well known “feeder” judges in the Courts of Appeals, like Judge Garland is and Justice Ginsburg and Justice Souter were before their appointment. Barrett was a prominent law professor. The appointments were completely unsurprising.
    - dvt 5y ago
      It's just a talking point that gets repeated by folks that don't follow the legal profession in general or the federal courts more specifically. It's completely ridiculous to claim that Barrett is a "conservative sockpuppet" as some commenter below us makes. She's been a law professor most of her life. But everyone plays dirty: Garland should've been on SCOTUS (his work on the OKC bombing prosecution speaks for itself, and is not to mention patriotic); it's a shame that Congress blocked that vote, but politics is politics.
  - Dracophoenix 5y ago
    Changed? I guess you've never heard of Robert Bork or Ted Kennedy's admitted attempt to sabotage him on the Senate floor.
- rectang 5y ago
  Asserting that SCOTUS decisions are apolitical and "objective" is inherently political.
  - SllX 5y ago
    Sure, but it’s a policy choice—a more polite way of saying a political choice—to treat SCOTUS like a legal institution rather than a political one. It is a legal institution, not a political one in the way Congress is explicitly a political institution that writes laws, but the seat holders are not apolitical machines who merely objectively look at what the law says because part of why they are there is that they have perspectives and they exercise this valuable thing called professional judgement that in the private sector people pay a lot of money for. Judicial philosophies which defer to the text as it is written (textualism) or interpret the text as it would have been understood in its original time and place (originalism) are treated with suspicion and politicized by those who believe the text should be interpreted through a modern reading and understanding of the text (living constitutionalism). SCOTUS will never be perfectly apolitical, not while it is staffed by people as I expect it to in perpetuity, but it should not also succumb to becoming a political institution instead of a legal one.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Asserting that SCOTUS decisions are apolitical and "objective" is inherently political. Maybe, it's definitely false, in any case.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Interpreting law is, generally speaking, a pretty objective task No, it's not. It is highly subjective; the various canons of legal construction all require subjective judgements, and selecting and prioritizing between them is subjective, and that's not even getting to the degree to which in practice those canons are invoked as post hoc rationalizations for decisions reflecting a jurists ideological and personal biases on the matter at issue.
  - dvt 5y ago
    Your argument is wrong, but more saliently, is simply not in line with the data of thousands and thousands of cases. Judges on the "opposite" sides of the political spectrum disagree just ~30% of the time. This shows that law is interpreted -- by smart, well-educated, professional justices -- very similarly across the board.
    - panda-giddiness 5y ago
      Sure, most cases aren't polarizing, but that doesn't mean that the law is objective -- the other 30% of cases proves as much. Personally, I'd be more interesting in knowing how many cases split 5/4 (or 6/3) the obvious way versus how many cases were unanimous or nearly so.
      - dvt 5y ago
        9-0 is far more common than 5-4, this is pretty common knowledge for anyone that follows SCOTUS, but here's a source[1]. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/06/28/those-5-4-decisions-on-the-supreme-court-9-0-is-far-more-common/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/0...
        panda-giddiness 5y ago
        Sorry, I see now that my comment was unclear. I mean of the 5/4 splits, I'd be curious what proportion of cases split 5/4 in the expected manner (Democratic vs Republican appointees) versus other alignments (e.g., Sotomayor, Thomas, Gorsuch, and Ginsburg versus the rest).